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After the third of these insidious liquid knickknacks had
kissed his lips and slid down him, he began dozing, only
rousing to say he'd like very much to break a fifty-dollar bill,
provided he was absolutely sure they'd give him all his
change in Confederate money. His mood changed then, and
when I left
h~
had just offered to whip any damn-Yankee
in the house.
ArER
all I reckon though that my faith, ever
since my adolescence, has been bedrocked in the Kentucky
julep. I used to like to watch my uncle make one - a
grizzled, unreconstructed, .veteran gunner-officer he was,
one-time chief of artillery on Breckinridge's staff and fairly
active in Johnston's Army - until Johnston ran out of
Army. He always held that the best mint grew on the grave
of a Confederate brigadier so that the congenial essences
of the slumbering warrior's soul might steal up through
the sod to whisper to···the tender roots of that fronded
greenery waving above, while he awaited the bugle for
Eternity's roll-call.
I wonder whether any mint grows on the mound where
my uncle sleeps? I hope so. Anyhow, may he rest in peace
- and he will, if Over There he can find somebody to
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